Description: A sturdily built and muscular creature, Aster has paws like rocks so rough they can cut the fair skin of beasts less accustomed to physical work than he. His fur is reddish-brown everywhere but his chest, which is creamy pale yellow. He has somewhat craggy eyebrows and a slight beard, and his face is somewhat handsome regardless of the two noticeable scars that adorn it, one above his left eye and one just below it. He wears always a plain flaxen smock and breeches tied with a simple belt made of woven rope. He refuses to wear shoes or gloves as he has no need of them. His eyes are a dark pine green, but they look black in most lights.

Possessions: A plain and modest burrow in the woodlands of Mossflower, where he can often be found chopping wood with his sole weapon, a long-bearded axe. He also owns a simple round shield of wood and iron.

Personality
Aster is an honest beast who believes in hard work and sacrifice, and often is condescending to creatures he views as "lazy". He cares for others a great deal, but cannot seem to get over his ingrained racist views. These are not just the usual vague notions of vermin species being evil to a beast and goodbeasts being always righteous, Aster often assigns other creatures certain qualities based on species above and beyond the level that most do, be the attribute positive or negative. An example of this would be assuming that any squirrel he meets must be a bowbeast, even if it is clear the squirrel is not.

In a tight spot the woodmouse is battle-savvy, knowing all the little in-fight tricks and using them well. Aster also cannot stand it when others complain around him, as he never voices his grievances no matter how severe.

Background
Asterwood, or Aster as he prefers to be called, was raised by a little family of artisans in the south of Mossflower. The oldest of the four young ones, Aster was charged with the tasks of watching his brothers while his parents worked on their trades, and also doing a daily check on an elderly hare that lived nearby. This hare was named Reginald Tanburr DeFilo, formerly a Captain in the Long Patrol, long since retired. Day after day, the young Aster spoke to the old hare about all manner of subjects, mostly of Reginald's journeys with the Long Patrol. Without knowing any better, Aster ended up absorbing a great deal of the old bitter beast's preconceptions about other beasts, from rats all being idiotic flea-ridden lazy bums, to rabbits always being snooty and uncaring, moles tending towards illiteracy, hedgehogs not being capable of thinking ahead much, and even the assumption that foxes were always untrustworthy and liable to know strange magic. After coming of age, Aster went off on his own, becoming a woodcutter and living a comfortable distance from Redwall and his parent's cottage. He comes to visit Redwall very often, as he does his family, but usually he can be found hauling dead trees and repairing paw-bridges over woodland streams.